Tag: Food

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Aesthetics Culture

Day 1623 and a Costco Birthday

Today is my husband’s birthday. He genuinely is a very low key guy and when his birthday falls on a weekday he isn’t into big to-dos. But he said he’d be up for a Costco date.

No surer sign of enjoying middle age than loving the finest buyers club values of Cost. But to be honest we’ve both always loved Costco. And you can really get into Costco when you have a multiple barn freezers and backup power so no apologies for our love of a practical Costco date.

Bounce house for sale? Birthday win

Though it didn’t go entirely to plan. If it means anything to the pulse of America the Bozeman Costco was a chaotic in a “concerning operational decay” way.

Now we noticed a lot of categories completely out. No lemons. Several steak cuts we’d been hoping to get for a birthday dinner. Produce in general was pretty bad. Enough to make you wonder if they were affected by the United Natural Foods hack.

But other things were off. Staffing wise you had to wonder if they fired half the staff or no one planned for managing checkout flow for June in Montana high season? Nothing is as predictable as tourists going to Yellowstone if you’ve got a manager with any tenure or common sense. but maybe they don’t. I have a Twitter mutual who burned out on a Costco job so two strikes guys. Talent is part of the Costco brand.

Alex works New York hours so we got there around 2:30 or so which you’d think would be quiet but is not in midsummer in southern Montana. It was summer high season traffic you’d expect on a Saturday though.

We walked every aisle and there was a lot of fun oddities. Japanese toilets, water bottle drying racks, sound absorbing wall panels. And there were some less fun selections.

We usually do a better business with bear spray

There was a disturbing amount of slop packaging products and rapidly prototyped TikTok trends follow ons. Dubai chocolate ice cream bars? The zoomers will enjoy their summers up here I’m sure.

Lots of grouchy Boomers and exhausted families were looking for basics in the middle of the store as we perused the sides of the store for fun. Everyone is in Montana it seems. As we waited checkout I heard discussion of how JD Vance meeting with the Murdoch family at their ranch in Dillon.

We had intended to go end it with a hot dog and pizza slice respectively but it was so intense at the checkout area we didn’t even try. The lines were unmanageable which is how we got so much gossip. Montana isn’t so big that you can fly Air Force 2 to Butte without chatter about which ranch you are visiting.

I hope Costco has made some margin on selling gold bars to happy men like my husband. We also found a few other things

Categories
Homesteading

Day 1610 and Tempting Fate

As I was going about doing “prepare for the worst so the best may come” set of chores I chose to brag about our travel pharmacy packing.

As Elon Musk leaves government service there has been a flurry of media hits. I don’t know anything about his personal medical situation nor is it my place to comment but I found it comical to suggest that 20 drugs in a daily medication box was nefarious.

New York Times “Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama”

Those are to put it mildly “rookie numbers” in the biohacking business. And it’s barely a dent if you practice the kind of global chaos preparedness that we do. So I bragged about it and showed one of our global travel kits.

Ray Kurzweil isn’t making it to the singularity on less than 40 supplements a day so I sure as heck ain’t setting out into emerging economies with anything less than a full set of bacterial, viral, and gastrointestinal remedies.

And as we care about things like being first responder trained and able to render aid to our community, we joke that you really can’t be a pro-social prepper if you don’t carry an AFAIK kit.

As I was being snide about our the value preparedness, outside in my own backyard we were being tested. And as soon as it happened I felt completely unprepared. Pride does indeed go before a fall.

We have a beautiful red fox that has for several seasons lurked around our property. We also keep laying hens. Alex has hardened the chicken coop to make sure they did not have a chance to get in. Nature and domestication co-exist uneasily.

We have never seen the fox out in day save in the dead of winter. In the spring we rarely ever see the fox.

So whenever we let the chickens roam generally we keep a keen watch on them. We’ve gone a few seasons with this working but letting your guard down can get you.

Alex was walking down our long drive to retrieve a trash can and let the roaming chickens out of his sight for less than five minutes. In that time the fox raced out from behind foliage and took one.

We caught it all on camera. Having taken one (we could not find her) the fox came back not more than ten minutes later and tried to grab another chicken which point Alex saw and intervened. The fox dropped her but she has a puncture wound.

I finally hear the ruckus and come outside. I see feathers everywhere and figure it out as soon as I see feathers. .

This chicken is alive

I’m pulling out my phone and asking the LLMs how do we care for an injured chicken. Turns out it’s not that different than human.

I run to find the supples for cleaning and disinfecting. I find the topical antibiotics. It all takes much longer than I think it should. Alex cleans her up and she seems fine. But wont know how she recovers for a bit. Now I will do a review of our supplies and their locations as I am reminded that there is no such thing as too prepared.

Categories
Community

Day 1595 and Overflow

Bozeman is host to The Montana Festival this week. Alex and I are small donors to the festival as we are neighbors of one of the organizers Padden Guy Murphy. It’s a celebration of Montana’s many industries and people as we work together to build a better future.

Montana Festival is an annual celebration bringing together the top entrepreneurs, architects, business leaders, startup operators, innovators, artists, investors, culture creators, designers, community builders, movers, shakers and policymakers from across Montana and around the world to forge new friendships and catalyze Made in Montana ideas, projects, companies, and policy solutions to positively shape our shared future.

It has alas been raining to beat the band since the event started. At the welcome party last night literally the sound of the rain beat the sound of the band. This didn’t stop the band or anyone else from having a lovely time. Just raise your voice and have a good time.

Thankfully I’d taken Benadryl and some mold kickers as I’d been concerned I wouldn’t make the party with the weather as it was. I hope it clears further for Friday and Saturday as the intellectual and business events wrap up and it’s time for our outdoor events to kick off. If you are around consider registering and coming out.

Categories
Community

Day 1545 and Karens Calling Corporate

We’ve had a running joke amongst our friends in Bozeman that we have America’s worst Chipotle.

None of the food ever tastes quite right and MSU students who staff it always manage to have some random crisis playing out. Chipotle owns and operates all of its North American locations rather than franchising so it’s got no real excuses.

It’s bad enough that it was brought up to our friend’s sibling who works at Chipotle corporate. Is it complaining to management when it’s your family? A question for Karens of all ages.

Their Local Line program works to source food within a few hundred miles of its restaurants so you’d think at least the beef would be top notch.

Ahile in a hurry we ended up stopping by Chipotle as it was the quickest option on our way to a firm deadline. Now maybe we were really hungry but the food was terrific. Had our complaints reached someone?

After more than a year of avoiding the chain it had finally recovered. Probably a lesson in there about brand standards and the value of complaints.

The food has back at normal Chipotle “decency” and even the students were moderately more competent. Even the customers seemed in better spirits. We saw an actual teenage boy shoot his shot with a table of smiling girls.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1456 and Altered Window of Immunity

You ever push yourself so hard (physically, emotionally, mentally) that you crash afterwards? This is a common human experience. It’s called an altered window of immunity. Over exert yourself and you get sick.

I’ve come to understand the Christmas Break period as my yearly window of altered immunity. One reason I like to fast during the Holy Nights is to bring down my own physical and emotional reactivity.

When basic functions feel stressful and even small involuntary processes like digestion feel inflammatory then the work of living feels toxic. At that point one hopes rest is enough to get it out of your system.

The human tendency to ignore small problems until they become big problems is surely part of a wider cycle of disease. We wait to rest and repair till it’s too late and find ourselves crashing. For everyone bobbing along on the waves of life be sure to take a deep breath before plunging back under. It just might save your life.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1401 and Detox

I’m sure many a doctoral thesis has been written on the obsession with bodily purity and eternal search to rid oneself of toxins.

I’m not an academic but I was on the original Goop team in the far distant past when I worked for legendary adman Peter Arnell. So I’ve had a lot of exposure to particular purity culture that is modern consumer culture detoxing.

While I had hippie experiences with detoxification and also real ones like mercury chelation (which is a fun story), nothing is as intense as rich white women detoxing. From herbals to enemas to fasts you have a lot of choice.

I am all for the woo woo. The aspiration that if one just exercised enough control over oneself that all ailments could be cured is alluring. It’s also fucked up. Bodies are notoriously difficult to control and medicine is littered with mysterious ailments afflicting saints and sinners.

Alas I’m still tempted by this philosophy. I spent four days in Miami and I feel like a bunch of expensive detoxification treatments would be just the ticket. I’ll probably just sleep it off though.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1356 and Sick Sad World

Current ways of knowing are (maybe rightly) under scrutiny. Some of us attempt to source truth by look backwards citing Chesterton’s Fence.

I’ve been skeptical of romanticizing the past as traditional ways of knowing can be bad cultures too. Sick societies are a constant companion of human nature no matter how we long for that Paradise Lost.

Maladaptive cargo cults are everywhere (Silicon Valley has dozens of flavors) and these superstitions ca. reproduce for generations if nutritional gradients are surplus.n

Noble savages are as silly a concept as high minded aristocracy. You probably know a few maladaptive emotionally sick types within your own communities.

Next on Sick Sad World

Remember the long running joke of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert? Truthiness. Emotive truthiness reigns supreme as “news-like” content bubbles in the Internet of AI slop battle out the truth of an issue not with verifiable facts but verifiable feelings. Which one is more maladaptive?

We were subjected to a week’s worth of BBQing content which was digested by the American psyche until we switched to the new cycle of a crazed would-be assassin and his failed attempt to kill former president Trump.

If so much of our society is maladaptive copies of civilizational failures, the best any of us can do is pray we are humble enough to see truth and we willing to adapt our ways to it.

Categories
Culture

Day 1344 and Feeling Bubbly

I am changing the time zones I work as a few projects and founders work different hours than I do. So trying yo available across a bunch of different hubs is going to be the stuff of my next few weeks.

And I’m trying to adjust to London time and calculate out GMT+ N as time zone delirium makes wonder when it’s morning in Singapore.

Naturally I want some caffeine. The fatigue from bad sleep, a poor recovery and the constant pulling up of different calendars to double check times is breaking my brain.

I do a coffee in the morning as a part of my wake up ritual but caffeine beyond that is not quite my thing.

At any my lunch (early for Americans and normal time for London) I decided to get one of those charmingly small cans of Diet Coke. I had a choice of glass and tiny tongues to pluck each individual ice cube into the beverage.

I was not feeling awake enough for that sort of European singular cube nonsense. My American mind literally cannot comprehend. I’m not much for soda or caffeinated drinks but if anyone gets in the way of my ice I’ll be feeling much less bubbly.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1319 and Gimme Fuel, Gimme Fire

I’m a little bit underfed at the moment. If I don’t have someone feeding me I basically don’t eat. And I didn’t eat much this weekend because I was alone. The joyful peace of solitude means I’ll skip every meal I can.

I don’t mind a little feast and famine because I’ve always found food to be at best inconvenient and at worst an actively hostile force that would make me an undesirable fat woman. Elder millennials had terrific culture for women what else can say.

I didn’t come from a family that had a strong culture of food. Scandinavian foods are kind of gross when filtered through American agribusiness. Happy family mealtimes and nurturing through food seems like the stuff of movies not real life. It certainly wasn’t my experience as a kid.

I mostly absorbed the wider culture around me which said food was dangerous for women and should be actively restricted. The experiences I did have in my family’s relationship to food were not uniformly positive.

I’ve had years where I was able to look at food as fuel but those were mostly when I was very dedicated to athletic pursuits.

Alas that’s in the past for me thanks to age and disease. I’m happy I’m healthy enough to squat a few times a week and be out of bed for multiple hours at a time. And that’s still a struggle with my ankylosis.

I don’t crave food or have intrusive thoughts about it. I mostly just don’t like to eat and it has surely contributed to a genetic propensity to weight gain especially when it’s been combined with steroids to manage my autoimmune condition. If I were my body I wouldn’t speed up my metabolism either.

I better force myself into a meal right now because as tempting as it is to just not eat it’s a bad habit. But if someone just solves the problem of food I’d be the first person in line. Especially now that the American food system is beyond tainted. Like truly how can we have the fire to burn if our fuel is this bad?

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1316 and August Has Its Moments

I wasn’t expecting August to be much fun but I’m on an enjoyable roll through the first week. Maybe the politicians will listen to us and maybe they won’t. But stuff still gets built no matter what the news says so I’m just working what’s in front of me with my people.

We’ve had relatively good luck with weather this week and the fires have blessedly not been blowing into the valley. Which does a lot to improve moods. It’s cool, bright and you can breathe.

Add in a few prime season tomatoes, some fresh basil, a Japanese watermelon at its peak, and you’ve got the making of a great evening. With sunset coming earlier every day I can almost feel like fall might come after all.

The simple pleasures and a lot of work keep the summer from driving you too crazy. But if you need a little crazy might I interest you in some thoughts on ratfucking and campaign semiotics.